Felicia’s eyes went wide. She tried to withdraw her hand, but Leon held her fast. And when she glanced around the cabin for backup, she realized no one was paying them any mind. The plane was too empty. The crew otherwise occupied.
Leon’s grip tightened as if to chastise her for seeking help. Her gaze met his once more. His expression was dark amusement now, like a schoolyard bully’s. He felt her pulse quicken in her wrist and noted with satisfaction the sheen of sweat that had broken out across her brow.
“I want you to go get me two bottles of Jack Daniel’s and two cups-one with ice, one without. Not one bottle, and not one cup. And don’t go pouring for me-I wanna get the ratio of booze to ice just right. Can you do that for me, Felicia?”
Felicia nodded. Leon’s expression darkened, and the pressure of his grip increased once more. It hurt. He knew it. “I want to hear you say it.”
“Y-yes,” Felicia said. “I can do that.”
“Atta girl,” Leon said, releasing her, a smile upon his face once more. “That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”
Felicia shook her head and took off trembling down the aisle to fetch his drink.
“Oh, and Felicia?” he called, cheery as could be.
Felicia turned.
“Fetch me one a them neck pillows while you’re at it.”
17
“Yo, Chazz,” said Hank Garfield from the open doorway of Charlie Thompson’s file-strewn, overstuffed office, nestled deep inside the concrete monstrosity of the J. Edgar Hoover Building in DC. “You got a sec? I got something you oughta see.”
Thompson wasn’t wild about her partner’s new nickname for her-or the fact that he’d waited until she was on the phone to interrupt her-and she was pretty sure he knew it. But she didn’t get as far as she had in the Bureau by letting pricks like Garfield push her buttons, so instead of giving him the satisfaction of correcting him, she told Jess she’d call her back and then asked Garfield, “Is this about my ghost?”
“Sorry to disappoint,” he scoffed, “but not all roads lead back to your little pet obsession. As you may or may not know, there are one or two other bad guys in the country the FBI’s been tasked with nabbing.”
Shit. It’d been nearly a week since the trail in Miami ran cold, but Thompson had been holding out hope some of the feelers they’d put out among their community of confidential informants would pay off. She felt sure someone had to be helping this guy-funding him, arming him, issuing his marching orders. And any organization brazen enough to order the hits they had-not to mention powerful enough to pull them off-had to leave a footprint of some kind. But there wasn’t one. It was so damned maddening she was starting to half-believe Garfield’s gibes that she was hunting Batman.
She extended a hand toward the manila folder Garfield was holding and curled her fingers twice in a gimme sign. “What’ve you got?”
He handed her the file. It contained a photocopy of a commercial airline’s passenger manifest and a series of grainy, black-and-white security-cam photos of a burly, mustachioed man walking through an airport concourse with the sort of hunched, furtive demeanor that suggested he knew damn well he was on camera-and that he didn’t like it one bit.
“Fella you’re looking at is a hitter by the name of Leon Leonwood,” Garfield said. “TSA forwarded along the passenger list when one of his aliases popped.”
“I know the name,” said Thompson. “This guy’s got one hell of a nasty reputation. How come he’s not no-fly?”
“Rep aside, we’ve got nothing on him. He’s suspected in no fewer than a dozen hits in the past five years alone, but as bloody as he leaves his vics, he never leaves us much to go on by way of evidence. But if he’s on the move, maybe we can catch him in the act.”
“Where were these pictures taken?”
“Saint Louis International. He landed an hour ago.”
“Any idea who the target is?”
“Nothing yet. I figure he’s got a job lined up in town. I’ve got Atwood and Prescott looking into it.”
Thompson shook her head. “The hit won’t be in St. Louis. Leonwood’s a pro-he’d never fly into the city the job’s in. My guess is, the hit’s someplace close, but not too close. Have Atwood and Prescott comb through the chatter out of Kansas City, Louisville, Nashville, Memphis, Chicago-anywhere we’ve got ears out within a day’s drive. And have our agents on the ground circulate these pics at every rental car company in town, with special attention to the ones near-but not in-the airport. He’ll be looking to break up his trail, and my bet is, he won’t want to run the risk of a cabbie remembering him, which means he’ll leave the airport on foot. Get them a complete list of Leonwood’s aliases, too-he’s gonna switch up now that he’s on the ground.”
“Anything else, boss?” Garfield asked, both annoyed by his partner’s marching orders and embarrassed he hadn’t gotten there on his own.
Thompson thought a moment, her gaze passing over the stacks of unread files and unfinished reports on her desk-all awaiting her attention, and a good three-quarters of them unworthy of it. “Yeah,” she said, finally. “Two things, actually. Thing one: book us on the next flight to St. Louis. You and me are gonna track Leonwood from the ground.”
“Okay-what’s thing two?”
“Thing two, Henry, is if you call me anything other than Charlie, Charlotte, or Special Agent Thompson again, me and my trusty sidearm are gonna make sure the only thing the boys around here ever call you is One Ball, comprende?”
Garfield gulped. “You got it, b- Special Agent Thompson.”
“Good,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Now get moving. We’ve got a bad guy to catch.”
18
Eric Purkhiser’s stomach churned as he frantically stuffed clothes into a duffel bag. He was dizzy and light-headed. Acid scratched at the back of his throat.
He should have known the whiskey was a bad idea.
He’d taken a swig straight from the bottle as soon as he got home from Westlake Plaza. He thought that it would calm his nerves. Instead, it came back up immediately, along with what was left of his lunch.
He tried to tell himself the dude who braced him at the mall this afternoon was running some kind of con-that he was a petty lowlife who’d stumbled across the story on Purkhiser’s big win and figured he could shake him down for some quick cash. But he didn’t really believe that. The guy’d been too skilled, too steady-too clearly practiced in this sort of meeting for it to’ve been a one-off. Planting his wallet in Purkhiser’s pocket without him noticing?
Knocking out the security feeds? Talking his way out of an armed standoff with mall security? That shit screamed pro. And the fact that the dude didn’t bite when Purkhiser offered to pay his fee out of the casino winnings further suggested this was no shakedown.
Which meant the dude was telling the truth.
Which meant the Atlanta Outfit had found him.
Problem was, Purkhiser was skint. Strapped. Flat-ass broke, to own the truth. There was no way he was gonna come up with a quarter mil in just three days. He was no holdup artist; he was a computer geek. It took him the better part of a year to plan and run his little casino scam-and anyway, it was that selfsame scam that put him on the Outfit’s radar in the first place.
That left running.
Clueless. Blind.
He knew he didn’t stand a chance. Didn’t have the skill set to make himself disappear at the drop of a hat. Given time-time and money-he could set something up, finesse a new ID out of the ether, and set up a series of blind trusts on which to live; that was his plan once he got his six-mil payout, after all. But when it came to running balls-out, to Bourne-style evasion and ass-kickery, he was as ill-prepared as any career cubicle-dweller in America. Which is, of course, essentially what he had been before he turned stoolie and his whole life went to shit.